Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, March 30, 1993 TAG: 9303300076
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ROBERT MACY ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LAS VEGAS LENGTH: Medium
Guess again.
David Copperfield - the man who has made the Statue of Liberty and a jet plane disappear, the man who has levitated himself across the Grand Canyon and walked through the Great Wall of China - fretting over a card trick?
But this, Copperfield will tell you, is no simple "card trick."
"It's interactive; the magic really happens to the viewer," he said.
This year's show - his 15th annual production, to be broadcast tonight on CBS - will highlight the fiery escape, which he calls the most nerve-wracking trick he's ever done. But Copperfield hopes to reach out and touch viewers with his card trick.
"We'll ask the people at home to take nine playing cards, mix them up, then hold one up to the TV screen," Copperfield explained. "I'm going to attempt to tell millions of viewers at once the card they've picked out. They will see something they won't believe.
"Everybody gets a chance to do it," Copperfield said as he relaxed in his dressing room at Caesars Palace, where he was completing two weeks of sellout performances in mid-February. "We'll have a cast of millions."
Copperfield, 36, performs about 500 shows annually at venues around the world, and lists five presidential performances among his credits. Not bad for a Metuchen, N.J., native who began learning magic at age 10 "because I thought it was a good way to meet girls."
"I was an only child, yearning for acceptance," he said. "Magic made you feel special."
By age 12, "Davino, the Boy Magician" had earned membership in the prestigious Society of American Magicians.
At 16, he was teaching his craft at New York University.
He realized early that the stage would be his life.
"I fell in love with Broadway, with the sensuality of Broadway," he said.
His flair for the dramatic has led to some incredible magic productions. One of the most exciting came a few years ago when he escaped from a locked safe deep in the basement of an abandoned warehouse, seconds before dynamite reduced the building to rubble.
"That was one of my most dangerous tricks, because if the timer was off and the dynamite went early, it would have been disastrous."
Finales of his TV specials alternate between death-defying feats and dramatic illusions.
The finale of this year's show was filmed last month before 10,000 people at Caesars Palace. Copperfield calls it the most dangerous trick he's ever done - and he did it twice for the gaping, gasping crowd.
Copperfield was strapped upside down in a straitjacket, hoisted 10 stories above burning stakes, and given two minutes to escape as flames burned through three ropes that provided his only support.
"For each of us, there comes a moment when we have to face our fears. For me, that moment is now," Copperfield said at the start of the elaborate production, which had been a year in the making.
The crowd cheered as Copperfield wriggled one hand free of the straitjacket about 45 seconds into the feat. Seconds later, one of the ropes burned through. Copperfield and the contraption to which he was tied flopped wildly above a stage where 80 stakes had been set on fire.
As he wrestled free of the straitjacket, a second rope burned through. He was able to untie his feet, and made it to safety just seconds before the two minutes expired.
"In the rehearsals, everybody was under there to catch me if I should fall," Copperfield recounted. "The night we filmed was the first time we'd done it without them, and with the burning stakes."
He admitted there was a heightened sense of fear. He said he was unnerved by the recent death of two friends - and the old superstition that deaths come in threes. What if the trick went awry?
"You just kind of block it out of your mind," he said, his dark eyes assuming a distant look. "There is always that chance that something is going to go wrong."
by CNB